Cistron is largely a competitor to companies like R&D Systems (Techne),
PharMingen (private) and BioSource Intl (BIOI). Take a look at the market cap of BIOI and the premium relative to cash in-hand, and you may develop an appetite to again consider it for short-term.
Almost any immunologist can tell you that they have a moderately
effective marketing effort. I have high respect for their cytokine assays, and their on-going reagents business is, IMO, deserving of consideration. They will now have big bucks to promote
their products. They have an outstanding judgement against PeproTech, a
company that I know well, for $2.7 million. PeproTech filed
for bankruptcy and is still functioning. This will mean more money
coming to CIST, the only question is how much and how soon.
IL-1 and IL-1-based assays sell very well, world-wide. If CIST is now
free to go after other providers, will it mean additional royalties and potential
damages? Their 10-K is well worth the read.
To stimulate your appetite for reading, CIST has license agreements with
GTI (now Sandoz) and Biotech Australia Pty (a "jointly owned subsidiary
of Hoechst A.G. and Hoechst Australia Ltd.") for therapeutics. It looks
like the GTI agreement is rather IMNR-like, except using IL-1 instead of
TNF in a recombinant cancer vaccine. The "Hoechst" agreement looks more interesting (to me),
and involves a plasminogen activator inhibitor. The promise of any such
agreement, of course, involves wording...... no way you're going to put
a PAI inhibitor into people for cancer therapy unless you can (1) do it
with a small molecule, and (2) target it.
CIST is a legitimate company that has
effectively marketed, for some time, a small variety of of cytokines and
assays for such. Given 27 million shares out, cash flow from a
respected reagents business, and $21 million plus out in guaranteed
cash coming in, I'd say that companies that currently OEM
IL-1 would be interested in CIST. Obviously, while I know this
industry very well, I do not yet know about hidden liabilities that CIST
might have. I can't emphasize this enough....... it requires
research beyond that which I have done to date.
Rick |
